Book Review: All Our Pretty Songs

Author: Sarah McCarry

Publication Date: July 30, 2013
Publisher: St. Martin’s Griffin

The first book in an exciting YA trilogy, this is the story of two best friends on the verge of a terrifying divide when they begin to encounter a cast of strange and mythical characters.

Set against the lush, magical backdrop of the Pacific Northwest, two inseparable best friends who have grown up like sisters—the charismatic, mercurial, and beautiful Aurora and the devoted, soulful, watchful narrator—find their bond challenged for the first time ever when a mysterious and gifted musician named Jack comes between them. Suddenly, each girl must decide what matters most: friendship, or love. What both girls don’t know is that the stakes are even higher than either of them could have imagined. They’re not the only ones who have noticed Jack’s gift; his music has awakened an ancient evil—and a world both above and below which may not be mythical at all. The real and the mystical; the romantic and the heartbreaking all begin to swirl together, carrying the two on journey that is both enthralling and terrifying.

And it’s up to the narrator to protect the people she loves—if she can.

“I am not in love,” I snap. “You can’t fall in love with someone you just met.”

We partied with adults, not little girls.

“I met a boy.” Boy is the wrong word. She laces her long fingers together.

But you know what Aurora says? The hard way is my favorite way to learn.

At first glance I knew this book might be a little dark and mysterious. This story follows a friendship between our nameless narrator and her best friend, Aurora, and a boy named Jack that causes an uproar in their lives and their longtime friendship. The prose and lyrical form that this novel was written in was absolutely breathtaking and very easy to follow. Before I knew it I was one hundred pages in and almost halfway done. Our narrator and Aurora have a friendship that I felt could never be severed from the way it was described. However, boys change a lot in the lives of young girls. I just wasn’t expecting what happened to these to happen at all!

Some things I enjoyed about this particular book, while others I did not. Honestly I was not too crazy about having an unnamed narrator. I am unsure why that bothered me so much, but it just did. Her connection to her best friend, Aurora, came off somewhat possessive or obsessive to me at first, but after a while I came to favor McCarry’s character development. That was my absolute favorite part of the book. I felt like I knew our narrator and Aurora as my own best friends. I loved being able to see into their minds like I was able to do with this first person point of view. They seemed like actual people to me. McCarry got down to the specifics, and while some readers may not like this – I enjoyed it very much!

What I did not like was Jack. He really upset me and the girls. He turned our narrator into this person that I started to dislike. After meeting him she started to make comments along the lines of wanting to kill herself if she can’t have him. It got dark and eerie really fast. Plus they had this instant attraction that I was not liking at all. What I hated most was the tension between her and Aurora. I felt like they were the perfect characters to balance each other out and he put a huge wedge in that!

I will check out the next book in this series because I do not like where this one left off at. I hope that things are different for our narrator in the next book!

***A copy of this book was provided to me by the publishers at St. Martin’s Griffin in exchange for an honest review***